In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day. The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site "not to disclose the existence of this request" unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

President Donald Trump has narrowed his first Supreme Court nomination to three finalists, with 10th Circuit judge Neil Gorsuch and 3rd Circuit judge Thomas Hardiman emerging as front-runners while 11th Circuit Judge Bill Pryor remains in the running but fading, according to people familiar with the search process. Trump interviewed at least those three finalists in New York during the transition, according to a person familiar with the search. Trump himself said Tuesday he would make a selection for the court’s empty seat next week and summoned top Senate leaders to the White House to discuss his impending choice to...

During the campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump released a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees that was met with reaction from conservatives ranging from general approval to ecstasy depending on who you defined as a “conservative.” Until Donald Trump won the election and President Trump made it clear he intended to move expeditiously on nominating a replacement for the great Antonin Scalia cultural conservatives were content to take the word of Supreme Court the Federalist Society and others in the legal profession that all the potential nominees were “conservatives.” However, when President Trump said that he planned to forward a...

President-elect Donald Trump has met with one of the judges on his short list for potential Supreme Court nominees, less than two weeks before he is expected to announce his choice for the nation’s highest court. Judge William Pryor, an Alabama-based judge on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, met with Trump in New York on Saturday, said two people familiar with the meeting. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting had not been publicly announced. […] The likely confirmation of Trump’s choice by a Republican-controlled Senate would restore a fifth vote for conservative outcomes in cases...

Veteran Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas lost his seat Tuesday to a freshman House Republican, putting the GOP a step closer to its goal of controlling the Senate for the first time in eight years. Rep. Tom Cotton's win brightened an already happy night for Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who won a sixth term of his own and was poised to become the Senate majority leader if his party could gain six new seats overall. Cotton, an Iraq combat veteran and Harvard Law School graduate, joined virtually every other Republican nationwide in relentlessly linking his opponent to President...

“The trend line in Arkansas looks gruesome for Mark Pryor,” Guy wrote in his preview post this morning surveying a handful of closely-watched Senate contests around the country. And who among us could disagree? Consider, for instance, this left leaning (D+7) PPP poll, which dropped over the weekend. Despite the fact that the D/R/I sample breakdown is 39/32/29, Sen. Pryor still finds himself on the losing end:

Democrats may be making their last stand in Arkansas. At the beginning of the cycle, Democrats touted a dream ticket that could help rally the party back to relevance after a series of stinging losses in the state. They cheered Sen. Mark Pryor’s (D) centrist profile and strong family name. In the governor’s race, they hoped former Rep. Mike Ross’s long string of successes in conservative southwest Arkansas would boost him. But months later, Pryor has trailed freshman Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for much of the summer in the Razorback State and former Rep. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) has had a...

The clock is running out for Democrat Mark Pryor to keep from losing his U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas to Republican Congressman Tom Cotton. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Arkansas Voters shows Cotton with 51% of the vote to Pryor’s 44%. Four percent (4%) like some other candidate in the race, and two percent (2%) remain undecided.

A new poll, this one by Talk Business and Politics/Hendrix College, puts Tom Cotton’s lead over Mark Pryor at 48-41. The survey included more than 2,000 likely voters and was taken after the last week’s Cotton-Pryor debate (as I understand it, there will be no more debates between the two). The margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percent. According to Dr. Jay Barth of Hendrix College, the survey shows that both Cotton and Pryor have locked up the support of their respective Party faithful. However, “Cotton has a strong advantage among the state’s voters who term themselves Independents...

Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe released his latest startling video this week, offering evidence that Arkansas Democrat U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor has been lying to his constituents about his position on marriage. Ahead of next month’s election, the lawmaker has reiterated his ostensible support of traditional marriage as he battles a tough conservative Republican opponent. According to the footage published by O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, however, Pryor’s true feelings on the matter are much different. Speaking to the chairperson of a pro-gay Arkansas Young Democrats organization, an undercover investigator posing as a homosexual potential campaign donor expressed his “misgivings” about Pryor regarding his stated...

A bombshell hidden-camera video released Wednesday airs a claim that Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor has privately told gay rights activists he supports a redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbians unions. Pryor, who is in a tight reelection battle, has publicly maintained an anti-gay-marriage stance in the red state in order to stay electable. 'I support traditional marriage, and I've been pretty clear on that for a long time,' Sen. Mark Pryor said in a May 31 news broadcast on KHBS-TV40 in the city of Fort Smith. But one of the state's prominent gay rights leaders told an undercover...

Should election campaigns and the candidates themselves - be it in Iowa with Bruce Braley (D) saying his rival Joni Ernst (R) is tied to the hip of the Koch Brothers or be it Tom Cotton in Arkansas (R) saying his rival Mark Pryor (D) is tied to the hip of Obama - eschew such tactics? In summation... Should both sides (be it the candidates and PACs on the Republican and Democrat side) eschew this political tactic, or should both sides continue to employ this tactic - and how is the MSM figuring into the dissemination of this political tactic?

what is likely to become a theme of the last weeks of campaigning before the midterm elections, former President Bill Clinton all but begged voters here in Arkansas not to use their vote as an expression of disapproval for Barack Obama. The president is playing an outsized role in the race between Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor and Republican challenger Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Obama is seriously unpopular here; a recent survey by the Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling put his job approval rating at 31 percent, versus 62 percent disapproval. ... The Democratic effort to free Pryor and...

The National Rifle Association on Tuesday said it's launching a $1.3 million television ad campaign to promote Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton's bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, a little over a year after the group ran radio ads defending Pryor's record on guns. The NRA said the 30-second spot will begin running in Little Rock and Jonesboro starting Wednesday and will run for at least four weeks. The ad touts the group's endorsement of Cotton and doesn't mention Pryor. The group is also spending six figures to run radio ads in the state and has been sending direct...

Late last year, vulnerable Democratic candidates worried that deep problems with the health care law could sink their chances of keeping a majority in the Senate. Now, suddenly, one red-state Democrat is praising the law in a new television ad — an indicator that public opinion of health care reform might have turned a corner. In the ad, Sen. Mark Pryor and his father, former Sen. David Pryor, recount Mark Pryor's own bout with cancer and his struggle finding health insurance that would cover it. "Mark's insurance company didn't want to pay for the treatment that ultimately saved his life," David Pryor says in the ad. "No one should be fighting...

When a far left Democrat such as Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor uses his campaign advertising to offer quotes from John McCain to distinguish himself from U.S. Rep Tom Cotton, his conservative Republican opponent, it’s clear there is a trouble in Liberalville. Pryor ‘s latest ad features McCain’s quote that “anyone who calls it amnesty is not being intellectually honest,” fires back at a recent Cotton campaign ad, saying Pryor “voted for amnesty and citizenship for illegals.” “Mark Pryor voted the same way as John McCain and many other Republican senators,” Pryor’s ad defends. “Secure the border first.” Very McCainesque, indeed.

PPP's newest Arkansas poll continues to find an incredibly tight race for the Senate. Republican Tom Cotton is at 41% to 39% for Democratic incumbent Mark Pryor, 4% for Green Party candidate Mark Swaney, and 3% for Libertarian Nathan LaFrance. All four PPP surveys of this race in the last year have found the candidates within 3 points of each other one way or another. When supporters of the third party hopefuls are asked who they would choose between the two major party candidates, Cotton's lead remains 2 points at 43/41, suggesting this may be a race where their presence...

The former Clinton home is now a well-appointed museum. The old two-lane road in front grew into a bustling artery leading to a Wal-Mart. Across the street sits a taco truck, whose owner, immigrant Elvia Bello, sells her famous tamales to the small but growing Latino population in the once-segregated community. But perhaps the biggest change of all in a state that once had reliably elected Democrats is the sandwich-board sign on a corner with hand-painted letters announcing: "Tea Party Meeting 4th Thursday 7 p.m." The Arkansas target is Sen. Mark Pryor thoroughly embraced by his state six years ago...

Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor has been buying up fall airtime for a race critical to nearly every hypothetical Republican path to the Senate majority. The two-term Democrat, who faces the fight of his political life against GOP Rep. Tom Cotton, has so far reserved several hundred thousand dollars worth of TV time for the closing six weeks of the race, according to a media-buying source. The Pryor campaign would not comment on its media strategy, but that’s just an opening salvo in a state already seeing a plethora of spending from outside groups and both campaigns. Amid a vigorous on-air...

Republicans from Washington to Little Rock are privately distressed that Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., – a candidate once hailed as their most talented U.S. Senate recruit of the cycle – has lost his luster in his challenge to second-term Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. The overarching problem: While Cotton’s resume is sparkling, his persona is flat. He speaks with authority, but lacks warmth. His wooden delivery is more often academic, lacking an everyday, common touch that’s still essential in a place with slightly less than 3 million people, the smallest state in the south. His slender frame and boyish haircut makes...